Wednesday, July 02, 2014

Europe part 1: A crazy suicidal king and accompanying castle!

Alright, folks, I’m going to make my best attempt at travel
blogging. I got lots of great
suggestions when I asked how to do travel blogging so that it stayed
interesting, so here I am to give my best effort. Also, I feel like I need to clarify that I do
not always think reading about other people’s vacations is boring. A lot of times I really love it, and it’s my
favorite type of things to read. Other
times.... (Visions of family
reunion sitting and watching a slideshow of 500 pictures of someone’s trip to
North Dakota are flashing through my mind.)

So here goes! My best effort. I'll probably have to break this up into three or four installments. But it's going to be fun- I promise!

*** Interesting fact- on the way to Neuschwanstein Greg demanded we pull over the car for an emergency stop so he could throw up. On the way home, my niece demanded we pull over the car for an emergecny stop so she could go potty in the grass. It was really quite eventful!***

King Ludwig II of Bavaria was this total nutjob who spent his life building huge, ornate castles in which he spent very little time. Ludwig took over the throne at the ripe old age of 18 and pretty much ignored all the state affairs in favor of his big fancy architectural projects, like Neuschwanstein- a castle Disney later used as model for the Sleeping Beauty castle. Ludwig built the castle as an homage to his favorite composed, Richard Wagner, and paid for the castle with own money and through extensive borrowing. His advisers tried to restrain him, but he would have his pretty expensive castle, dang it! The
castle was in the process of being built for 17 years and he only lived in it
for 170 some odd days. Even now the inside
of the castle remains mostly unfinished on the inside.
He was really into appearances, you could say. He was supposed to marry this one girl (with whom his main shared interest was great love for Richard Wagner) but
eventually broke it off with her, and he never had any mistresses. From his diaries we know he had strong homosexual desires. He was declared insane in his forties and days later he was found drowned in the
nearby lake alongside his therapist. HIS THERAPIST.

So with that awesome background story, I present to you the castle and nearby accompanying lake where Ludwig drowned. Feast your eyes!

^^ Germany was experiencing a total heat wave the first week we were there. I thought I was going to die if I didn't get in the lake. So we did.

My sister and her two youngest who showed us all the parts of the town. My sister is the bomb. Interesting fact- my niece, Caroline, was not wearing underwear all day long due to some misdirected potty aiming at a potty pit stop in the grass. Life is tough when you're four.

^^ THE CASTLE! Totally necessary for a single guy to have that much space, right?

^^ And the Sleeping Beauty castle. See the resemblance?

We also went one day to visit Old Ludwig’s hunting
lodge. I tell you, this Ludwig guy is as
fascinating as they come. The grounds
around the hunting lodge are gorgeous and now they have been turned into a
park/ mini amusement park for kids.
(Reminds me a bit of Michael Jackson…)
Also, Germans are really into their fairy tales… all over the place
there were these little houses where you could go in and listen to German fairy
tales. I understood absolutely no
German, but I’ll tell you this much, most of those “fairy tales” seemed
absolutely terrifying.

^^ Hunting lodge!

^^ Still in training.

^^ The kids got to sit on a throne and have people take pictures of them. It was weird.

I've been to Neuschwanstein! It was one of our first stops when we traveled abroad, and I fell in love with it. Some of my favorite photos from that trip are from the castle. Isn't it gorgeous? I'm just mesmerized by all the history in these castles. If only I could live in one :)

I'm actually in the process of learning German (because we are going to Austria, Czech Republic, and Ukraine in December) AND I just came back from a LEGO convention (long story) in which someone built Neuschwanstein out of LEGO's: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10100637781557991&set=pb.55007112.-2207520000.1404321449.&type=3&theater (don't know if you will be able to access that since it's on my facebook, so here's an other one: http://www.carneycastle.com/Neuschwanstein/bw3.jpg ).

Anyway, I think it is "Noysh-Vahn-Stine." But I may be entirely wrong.

I visited Neuschwanstein castle when I was 15 but it was undergoing renovations so you couldn't actually see the outside of the castle :( I definitely want to go back and see it in all of its glory one day!